


we all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe

by ArmedWithMyComputer



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Drug Use, Resuscitation, description of drowning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:27:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24137350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArmedWithMyComputer/pseuds/ArmedWithMyComputer
Summary: They were thirteen when Klaus had his first serious overdose. It was a turning point in their adolescence, for all of them, seeing how vulnerable they could be – right at the age where it was easy to think that they were invincible.He noticed the water creeping slowly out from underneath the door slowly, and Diego stared at it for a full minute, a frown burrowing on his face, as the puddle grew and reached Allison’s shiny new sneakers. Then he seemed to hear the silence coming from the locked bathroom, and realised that of all siblings, Klaus had the least self-control for silence – especially if he was only being quiet to goad their sister. A sick feeling began to manifest in his stomach, and he opened his mouth to say something but no words came out.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 144





	we all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe

They were thirteen when Klaus had his first serious overdose. It was a turning point in their adolescence, for all of them, seeing how vulnerable they could be – right at the age where it was easy to think that they were invincible.

There was nothing unusual about the day, other than that their father and Pogo had left the house for the afternoon on a business trip. The siblings had split off into different rooms as they usually did those days, and it was no one’s surprise that Klaus had darted into the main bathroom with his battered Walkman and likely a pocket full of drugs that he didn’t bother trying to hide from anything other than Reginald.

Allison was banging on the bathroom door with such force that Diego was sure her fist was about to go through it. He chuckled quietly as he walked past the door, at the thought of his brother dragging his daily bath out for as long as possible.

But then he noticed the water creeping slowly out from underneath the door.

Diego stared at it for a full minute, a frown burrowing on his face, as the puddle grew and reached Allison’s shiny new sneakers. Then he seemed to _hear_ the silence coming from the locked bathroom, and realised that of all siblings, Klaus had the least self-control for silence – especially if he was only being silent to goad their sister.

A sick feeling began to manifest in his stomach, and he opened his mouth to say something but no words came out.

Allison whirled around to face him, where he had frozen in the hallway, and threw her hands up in anger, “Don’t just stand here, at least help me, Diego!”

Then, startled by the strange expression, she followed his gaze to the ever-growing puddle of water around her feet, and Diego saw her begin to come to the same conclusion. _Something was wrong._ He used those few second to snap himself out of his trance, stumble the two steps to the door, and start banging on it himself.

Klaus? Klaus! Klaus, this isn’t funny! K-Klaus, if you can hear me say something! Klaus!”

Diego started jamming the door handle with as much force as he could get his numb hands to apply, and slammed his shoulder against the wooden door. It barely budged, and he cursed, applying more force and gritting his teeth against the nausea rising inside him.

“Get – Luther,” He forced out after another attempt to force the door open, but Allison was already running down the hall shouting for their brother.

She made it to his doorway just as he emerged from his bedroom, looking confused. “Allison, what—”

“Something’s wrong—Klaus, I think—Luther we need you!” She gasped out, fear making her throat close. Luther didn’t question her, his eyes seeing Diego trying to force the door open at the end of the corridor with only minimal success. The trail of wet footprints and water seeping across the floor made his heart beat painfully.

Within seconds, Luther was throwing his weight against the door, and grunted loudly as their combined strength finally forced it open.

And the sight inside was what they had all feared the most.

The bathtub was overflowing, water cascading over the sides and flooding the entire bathroom. Klaus wasn’t even visible from the doorway, and both Diego and Luther rushed in, slipping on the water and banging off each other to get to the tub.

Their brother was slumped in the bottom of the bath, lanky legs propped over the end of the bathtub.

His face was completely submerged, mouth slightly ajar, and eyes closed. Klaus’ skin was deathly white, and his hair floated hazily in the water, his facial features relaxed and peaceful. There was a still smouldering joint resting on top of the flowing tap, and as Diego got closer he could see several small white pills floating in the water.

It was a perfect storm.

Luther lunged forward and heaved Klaus out of the water, half submerging himself at the same time, and Diego grabbed his legs. Within two seconds, they had their brother on the floor, his body motionless on the wet tiles.

“No pulse!” Luther called out, voice hard and clinical. Diego wasted no time and slammed his hands down on Klaus’ chest, elbows locked out and fingers interlaced like they’d trained. By the time he’d done a compression, the bathroom was filled with their siblings and noise – shouting and cursing, sobbing and stumbling around.

Ben threw himself on the ground beside them and hovered over Klaus’ slack face, looking like he was about to pass out himself. Allison had ran looking for their mother after seeing the scene, and Vanya had sprinted for the infirmary. Five, in his logic, had jumped to the other side of the bathroom in a flash of blue, and turned the tap off, releasing the plug from the tub to stop the flood of cold water washing over them.

Diego held his breath as a reflex and concentrated solely on the rhythmic compressions on Klaus’ too skinny chest. He didn’t let himself think about the feeling of ribs shifting under his hands, or the unmistakable _crack_ that he could feel, and he definitely didn’t look at Klaus’ face and see those blue tinted lips.

Thirty compressions in, he paused for a beat to allow one of his brothers to deliver two breaths, and Diego forced himself to suck in a deep breath. Then he was back with his head down banging compressions away as Luther counted them aloud.

 _This is hell_ , Diego found himself thinking wildly, as his knees ached and the cold of the water seeped through his jeans.

Then their mother was beside them, her red lips pressed into a perfect smile. During the time that Diego had been doing compressions, Five had been jumping back and forth throughout the house gathering towels and bunching them around Klaus and the floor to soak up the water.

Outside the door, Vanya had run for the gurney that they had in the infirmary, and they were all still too young and institutionalised to realise that it wasn’t normal to have so much equipment in a household full of children. Allison was behind her with the defibrillator, eyes shining with tears.

Grace coordinated transferring Klaus to the gurney, after they’d placed towels on top and around him, his skin cold and clammy. Diego’s hands were _shaking shaking shaking_ the whole time Ben and Luther lifted their brother onto the gurney, but then stabilised once he was straight back on the chest.

Around his hands, their mother was placing the defibrillator sticky pads, and her calm nature helped Diego to draw in another shuddering breath. It was in times like these that he forgot to stop holding his breath.

After the fifth round of compressions and breaths, Klaus looked the same. He still wasn’t breathing or moving, or showing any signs of being remotely okay, and the tension in the crammed bathroom was palpable, punctuated by sobs and the powering up of the defibrillator.

Grace firmly pulled Diego back after he finished his round of compressions, his shoulders a knot of stress and his chest pounding out in pain. He automatically resisted her for a moment, until he heard the electronic defibrillator.

“Analysing rhythm… Analysing rhythm… Shock advised… Shock advised…”

Ben lunged forward, and raised his hand over the button on the defibrillator. He glanced up for a moment, eyes casting around them wildly, and shouted, “Clear, everybody, clear!” They all held their hands up and away from their brother in muted shock, trained into the procedure by their father but unable to believe that it was actually happening, and that it was Klaus, _Klau_ s _,_ on the gurney in front of them.

The shock that was delivered caused Klaus’ body to jerk minimally, like a puppet with its strings cut, and they all winced simultaneously.

Luther’s hand was pressed carefully against Klaus’ limp neck a moment later, and he closed his eyes in concentration. It took the briefest second, but then he called out, “Pulse! I have a pulse!” And then Klaus let out the weakest cough, and took a breath, his chest moving marginally.

Diego sucked in a breath and his vision swam.

The next few moments were a blur of their mother and Five cranking up the gurney in order to move it through the house towards the infirmary. Once they had Klaus stabilised, with a portable oxygen mask and tank that Five had jumped back to get, and a mixture of towels and blankets wrapped around him, they started moving.

The siblings all moved to follow, but Diego found that his knees were numb and he stumbled trying to get to his feet. Luther wrapped a strong hand around his upper arm and hauled him the rest of the way to his feet without a word, and Allison paused for the briefest moment to touch his other arm gently.

Somewhere along the maze of corridors, Diego felt Vanya press against him, and whisper quietly, “Breathe, Diego.”

He gasped and let out the breath he’d forgotten about, and her lips almost twitched up in amusement.

Then they reached the infirmary and it was almost as if there was an invisible barrier that they all paused at. Their mother and Five kept moving swiftly through into the room, but the rest of them stopped dead at the doorway and leant against each other and the doorjam for support.

By this stage, Klaus was coughing more and gasping for air, twitching his head slightly, and he still looked awful but it eased something in Diego’s chest to see his brother’s hands clenching weakly at his sides. Then Klaus was making small moaning noises, and almost recoiling as their mother quickly prepared a syringe of medication and eased it firmly into his bicep muscle.

Diego felt the colour draining from his face, and his knees going weak at the sight of the needle, and he turned his face to the side. Ben was beside him, body wound tight with tension and his arms wrapped around his stomach, in his normal state of acute distress. He rested his head against his brother’s shoulder, and felt them both shaking.

But Klaus was coming around slowly, his groans becoming louder, and his breaths getting deeper.

There was an oxygen mask secured on his mouth and nose, and heart monitor leads trailing from the bed along with a pulse oximeter and an IV cannula that Diego had missed the insertion of, but Klaus looked infinitely better than he had five minutes previously.

His chest was beginning to turn magnificent colours of red and purple, from a combination of the cold and the compressions, and Diego felt his own ribs throb for a moment.

Diego realised then that he was breathing along with Klaus, his own breaths matching his brother’s, and the thought eased some of the pressure that had built.

.

Hours later, they were gathered around Klaus’ bed.

Klaus had initially tried to play it cool, by waving a nonchalant hand in the air and making some excuse about riding the high, but had abandoned that approach fairly quickly after seeing all their faces.

“Did—did you do it on purpose?” Luther eventually blurted out, getting straight to the point instead of their dancing around it. Allison flinched at the directness, and Ben tightened his grip marginally against Klaus’s shoulder.

Klaus seemed to take a moment to ponder the question, really consider it, with his pale face scrunching up around the oxygen cannulae that still delivered a low level of oxygen. He coughed weakly before answering, and the sound was wet and painful, even after several hours.

“I… I honestly don’t know.” His voice was hoarse and quiet, but the words resounded around the room, “I don’t know what to tell you. One moment I was peaceful and drifting, and the _silence_ , Christ, it was amazing. And the next, I was waking up in here.” A tear slipped out of the corner of his eye, and made its way down his cheek slowly, “I don’t know.”

None of them really had a response to that, so they just sat in silence and ignored the tears that gathered in their eyes, stoic in their collective pain.

“I’m sorry,” Klaus whispered.

**Author's Note:**

> This was just a little peek into something I've had on my mind for a while. 
> 
> Title is a quote from Andrea Gibson.
> 
> Also a glimpse at a semi-accurate resuscitation protocol, no pulse = compressions x 30, breaths x 2, using the defibrillator to find a shockable rhythm, pulse check, and then back on the chest if there's still no pulse until the next rhythm check. The drug that Grace administers is IM naloxone, for reversal of opiate overdose. Other important aspects are making the resus scene safe, ie drying any water around, and making sure everyone is clear before shocking. 
> 
> Let me know thoughts with kudos or comments if you have time!


End file.
